


What They Call Him

by kaeorin



Series: Loki's Lullabies [153]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Affection, F/M, Fluff, Loki (Marvel) Needs a Hug, Love, M/M, POV Loki (Marvel), Pet Names, Pre-Relationship, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2020-09-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 05:01:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26690077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaeorin/pseuds/kaeorin
Summary: Loki’s been on the receiving end of a lot of nicknames in his time, but there’s something different about the things you call him.
Relationships: Loki (Marvel)/Reader
Series: Loki's Lullabies [153]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1678240
Comments: 17
Kudos: 234





	What They Call Him

**Author's Note:**

> I know that I’ve done one like this for the pet names that Loki calls you ([The Sweetest and Most Important Sound](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24174202)) but I just really wanted to write about Loki getting flustered over someone being kind and loving to him. I really hope you don’t mind all these “sequels” and callbacks to earlier stories but I promise that that’s not the new normal in these fics.

_"It ain't what they call you, it's what you answer to."_

— W.C. Fields

Over the course of his life, Loki had held a great many names and titles. The trickster. The god of lies. The mischief-maker. Odin's lesser son. Laufeyson. The spoils of war. The tangled one, twisted and gnarled. They weren't kind. Very few of them _were_ , in fact. For centuries, he had known nothing but cool disdain and distaste from others.

But then, you. Seemingly out of nowhere, you stumbled into his life one day and refused to leave it again. You said his name simply, the way you said all of the others’. Loki knew that there was nothing out of the ordinary in the way you said his name, but he couldn’t get it out of his mind nonetheless. When you shaped your lips and teeth and tongue around the word that for years now had served to refer to him, he took a certain pleasure in that. Perhaps he sought out new ways to get you to say his name. Ways to pull your attention away from Stark or Rogers or anybody else who got to bask in your glow. He’d pull some sort of prank on you and then take off through the corridors, and you always shouted his name after him as you gave chase.

In truth, he was almost cruel to you for a while. Even he knew that it was unkind of him to watch and wait for you to let your guard down—a sign of comfort there in the Tower—only to swoop in and torment you. But for a long time, he kept playing his tricks on you without mercy, because you always laughed so sweetly after he’d allowed you to catch up to him again. The only thing that held him back was a cool, queasy feeling in his stomach each time he noticed the wary way you studied him before letting down your guard.

He found that he preferred it when you laughed his name. When you squeaked with fright or even growled with anger, a fierce thrill ran through him, but when you laughed, it turned into a curious warmth. Slowly, he reined in his mischief, and, slowly, your face grew more and more open around him. Even after all his previous treatment of you, you took to smiling so warmly at him. And something new began to creep into your voice. He couldn’t place it at first. It was similar to how you spoke to Wanda, or to Barnes, when you spent time together. At night, he puzzled over the sound, sometimes, when he couldn’t sleep.

It became clear to him one afternoon when he came upon you sitting on your own. You looked up from the book in your lap, gave him a warm smile, and greeted him with “Hey there, Sunbeam.” He’d hesitated in the doorway for a moment, trying to get a feel for you. Had anyone ever called him so incongruous a name? 

If it was anyone but you he would have pulled back, certain that they were trying to mock him, but your eyes held only warmth. And affection. And then it struck him that _that_ was the sound in your voice when you spoke to him. _Affection_. It curled around all of the words you said to him, not just his name. It made you smile at him and lean in closer as you spoke to him, and it kept him from pulling away. It was such a curious thing, being looked at and spoken to with something like _affection_ , but it fascinated him. Warmth began to grow in him too, towards you. It was impossible to say exactly when it began, but soon enough he was finding his own soft nicknames for you. Darling. Little Rabbit. Pet. You kept calling him Sunbeam.

You were not put off by his aloofness. You didn’t leave much room for it. You kept convincing him to join you at dinner, and at team meetings, and even on quiet strolls through the city. Over time, he adapted to your presence. And then he came to crave it. Neither of you made any conscious or overt steps towards anything more than casual acquaintances. Instead, you simply fell together as though each of you was only waiting for the other to arrive. That chafed his pride a bit, thinking about how long he’d lived before you were even born, and how _perfectly fine_ his life had been, but it was impossible to miss how much better things were now. He kept most of those kinds of thoughts to himself even as you took to quietly reaching out to take his hand.

It was late at night, and the two of you were the only ones left awake, sitting curled into one another on the sofa in one of the sitting rooms. He often felt as though he said more to you in the short time that he’d known you than he’d ever said in his life before you. Conversation flowed easily. You were smart—and so much more than that. You were interesting, and interest _ed_. That was why he fought even his own drowsiness to stay awake with you. His conscience prickled a bit to see how heavy your eyelids grew each night but he wasn’t nearly selfless enough to insist that you go to bed. He said something to you that night—almost certainly a joke, because he rather liked making you laugh—and laugh you did. You crumpled into yourself and reached out to grab his arm as you did. “Oh my god,” you gasped when at last you came up for air. “Loki, my darling, my prince, I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

Your prince. 

There was something just tender enough in your voice, your face, that it kept him from narrowing his eyes at you. He was not a fool. He knew in his heart of hearts that he was yours. He just wasn’t sure that he wanted _you_ to know that. But you caught his eyes and gave him the same warm smile that you always did. There was no sign of self-consciousness in your face. You did not seem embarrassed by the slip—if, indeed, it’d been a slip at all. When he cleared his throat and replied only with a gruff “My lady” as he closed his hand over yours where it still rested on his arm, he could have sworn that your smile grew a bit larger.

You lifted your chin as if in a challenge. “Really,” you said in that voice he liked, that late-night voice rough with sleepiness. “I’m so glad you’re here. Please _never_ leave.”

He did his best to offer you a cool laugh, to shrug off your words with an air of nonchalance. “You’ll find that ‘never’ is a long time. We’ll see how long your affection lasts.” And then he sent out a desperate prayer that you couldn’t hear the way his heart was beating in his chest.

The first time you called him “My love”, he nearly froze in his tracks. It was just the two of you, walking through the city as you often did. Your hand rested safely inside the crook of his elbow. He could tell that you were doing your best to remain sedate and well-mannered here in public, but the way your fingers kept tightening almost imperceptibly on his sleeve betrayed the truth. He knew that you longed to throw yourself into his arms. In the privacy of his rooms, or of yours, you delighted in his touch. Before you, he hadn’t known how deeply and fiercely he was capable of loving another, but you made things so clear. You luxuriated in his love. You basked in it like a cat in a beam of golden sunlight. You loved to throw your arms around him and bury your face against his chest, and, what’s more, you loved having his arms around _you_. 

Loki held back for as long as he could. This feeling was so new to him. This certainty. Mortals were not particularly difficult to understand—he was rather good at deciphering their moods and desires and hidden secrets with little more than a glance or a short conversation. But he felt like he could know you in a way that was so much deeper. He didn’t have to look at your face to determine how you felt about him on any given day; he just woke up and felt things for you and he knew that you felt the same. It was that easy.

At long last, he relented, shifting a bit so he could drape his arm around your shoulders and pull you in closer against his body. He couldn’t miss the brilliant smile that crept across your face, or the contented sigh that escaped your lips as you leaned your head against his shoulder. “Ah, my lovely love with arms so strong and heart so warm.”

He’d faltered a bit in his steps, it was true, but it was easy enough to blame that on some uneven sidewalk. Your voice was deceptively light, as though you were only playing with words. You did that sometimes: crafted silly lilting songs or attempted to draft lines of sweeping poetry about some tiny detail of your day. He tried to convince himself that that was all this was. You hadn’t put any particular thought into the phrase, only strung together some words that you’d read before. The two of you read poems to each other in bed, sometimes, and surely some other poet had once written a line like yours?

You grew a little quieter, but you both continued walking. He was still turning your words over in his mind despite his best efforts to push them aside. He knew that he loved you—he knew that he’d done so practically from the moment you’d first gathered the courage to hold his hand—but to assume that you felt the same was foolish, even for one as arrogant as he was. As always, if you were put off by his stony silence, you held your tongue for a long time.

After a while, however, you pulled yourself away from him and reached to take his hands. You pulled him off to the side of the street, so that you ran less risk of getting run down by other pedestrians, and then brought his hands up to your lips so you could kiss each of his knuckles in turn. “You don’t need to say anything back, okay?” You met his gaze, and your eyes were sharp and burning with the usual determination. “In fact, I don’t _want_ you to say anything back. But I just wanted to make sure you knew. That, um. You know. That I _love_ you.”

Something inside him, something buried deep deep inside, raised its hackles. Half a lifetime of neglect and worse was more than enough to teach him not to crave anything like love. But then you kissed his hands again, your lips soft and warm against his skin, and somehow you made it easier to soothe that anger.

He’d drawn in a breath and gathered up the courage he’d never thought he’d need, and then nodded. And said the same thing back to you—in a rush of breath and words, quickly so that you couldn’t interrupt him to tell him not to say it. Sure enough, your brows furrowed at him for only a moment or two, but there must have been something in his face that assured you of his truthfulness. He watched a soft smile curl the corners of your lips and then he couldn’t stop himself from sweeping you up into his arms so that he could kiss you.

You’d been nervous to tell him you loved him. Tomorrow, perhaps he would begin to muse over ways that he could make his feelings for you even more obvious and unmistakable than he thought they already were, but, for now, he kissed you deeply and did his very best to retain control over himself when he heard you begin to mumble something against his lips. 

“Loki. My Loki. My love, my Loki...”

The words settled deep inside of him, and he found that he couldn’t let you go.


End file.
